Preliminaries

The theme of "global conversations" could prove a very useful framework. I am sending you a copy of a paper entitled Sustainable Dialogue as a Necessary Template for Sustainable Community" (paper for a Cleveland, 1995, Conference on Organization Dimensions of Social Change). This reflects some of my concerns about the challenge of rethinking dialogue. It emerged from my learnings from the abysmal failures of the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions (Chicago). The question is how to move beyond our collective and individual tendency to sink back into minimally productive patterns?

I am also sending you a write up I did of the 1st World Congress on Transdisciplinarity (Lisbon, 1994) which has some points of relevance you may enjoy. Also one on a conference organized by Magda McHale on "Who is Designing the 21st Century?" (Buffalo, 1995). Shortly I will send you one on the recent International Conference on Eco-villages and Sustainable Communities (Scotland, 1995). The three of them have the merit of being creative disinformation and merely reflect my view of what the future would have wanted them to be -- often much more rewarding than the cold reality!